It seems like the past few years have been dreary for the MMO market. Even games that I was excited about due to the premise and my history with the series (SWTOR, I'm looking at you) have failed to deliver a fun, polished, innovative experience. I have seen truly interesting games pushed out far before they were ready, I've seen almost direct ripoffs of Warcraft, and I've also seen a lot of games that simply have no heart. Because of this, and perhaps because I was only a mild fan of the original Guild Wars, I followed the Guild Wars 2 hype with a fair amount of skepticism. The energy and the passion of the developers began to intrigue me, though, so I pre-purchased the game in order to have access to the beta weekends -- and there was no turning back. The most important thing I should say is that you should throw out any pre-conceptions you have about the game based on the original Guild Wars. While there are certainly some familiar aspects this is a complete redesign of the Guild Wars experience.
The first thing that struck me about the game was the sheer size, level of detail, and outright beauty of the world. This is the first game where I have walked into a main city and could actually imagine thousands of people living there. It is a great deal of fun to explore, and this becomes a key part of the game. Rather than simply being pointed to a town where you talk to a handful of NPCs, pick up a handful of quests, trot off twenty feet to handle the quests, return, rinse and repeat, this game encourages you to get out and take a look around. When you need direction you can look at your map and there will be hearts indicating someone in need of help -- but the true purpose of these hearts is to get out you into that area to be exposed to the events that happen there. These events can be as small as bandits raiding a farmer's field, or a massive Shadow Behemoth on the scale of a raid boss, but there is almost always something to be seen. Forget the blinders that most MMOs have you put on while you quest: Guild Wars 2 wants you to rip them off, pay attention, and wander off whenever something strikes your fancy.
The Guild Wars team has put a lot of thought into some of the social dynamics of MMOs, and I have to sheepishly agree that I was much like everyone else. I glared virtual daggers at any player that would show up and start killing 'my' boars, mining 'my' material nodes, and otherwise doing what any normal player should be doing. Prior MMOs fed this anti-social, territorial urge by limiting the ways you could cooperate and share resources. I had to group up with that total stranger in order to share kill credit, and I had to dash around madly to collect crafting resources because if the other player got there first it was gone. Though the purpose of an MMO was to play with others, it was often less beneficial to do so and enforced an everyman for himself mentality. Guild Wars does away with all this nonsense and makes it exciting to see other players again. Anyone who participates gets credit, a player mining a resource node doesn't make it disappear for you, and some of the events are difficult enough that it is a relief when a large pack of players shows up to assist. As an interesting touch, the final area of player conflict (PvP/WvW) even opts to show you a generic name for the opposing team's members instead of giving you a player name so no grudge can be carried over from the match.
